Round Robin

Crows flew by my window today. Not once, not twice, but enough times that I thought perhaps they were doing circles of which I was only witnessing a small part. Then I remembered France and the dark park. The sky was greying to something thicker and more foreboding. Of course, any walk after dusk in France is treacherous on account of the dog shit, everywhere. It's just not safe. But then Katy pointed up at the sky.

If I hadn't seen the Starling video or witnessed a guano covered rock from the edge of a cliff in Oregon, I might not have believed that such masses could exist. And perhaps if I hadn't seen The Birds at an impressionable age (but aren't they all?), I wouldn't be so quick to assume the worst. On the one hand, they made beautiful sounds, on the other, the brightly lit carnival with garish lights that contrasted against the practically black and white sky, so devoid was it of color, only contributed to my mood.

There are no starlings, or grand herons or stretched and still cormorants in my weeks. No robins, no blue birds. But black birds, vultures, wild turkeys I have aplenty. As if one could have what flies freely across the window like an apparition.

The Daily Write: Today's chief complaint (August 31, 2013)

Writing Prompt: Today's chief complaint

 

I can't tell who to believe, or how much context is missing. This potential strike on Syria - is it the right thing to do? As a friend pointed out today, killing a dog for fur to line the collar of a coat and calling it fox doesn't make it more bad than using real fox fur. Because it was a chemical weapon and not a bomb, or shower of bullets, is that reason enough for our country to kill more people, possibly families, in pursuit of some sort of justice? Are we just trying to assert our ultimate authority on the world stage?
  

Part of me thinks, "yes, we have to do something." But you know, that part of me knows nothing of war (thank god). "Doing something" sounds a lot easier when it's in the abstract. But there is nothing abstract about murder. I heard NPR reporters interviewing people yesterday who said that the UN inspectors had solid evidence that chemical weapons were used. They said over 1,400 people, including over 400 children died. This is unconscionable. But why are we intervening in Syria and we left Sudan alone? What about The Congo? There have been mass genocides going on for the last decade, for years, forever really. Why are we more likely to "intervene" (bomb) Syria than Sudan? What do they have that we want?
  
My chief complaint is that I can't trust the chief. I can't tell who is telling which half truths and how bad the lies are. I can't recognize the lies, but I know they are being told. If there's one thing I've learned as an adult is that we are never told the entire story by politicians, and leaders, and those wielding a great deal of power. In fact, it's so bad that the level of deceit is hard to fathom. It calls into question all the principles I was raised believing.
  

I wish I knew the truth, and how to speak truth to power, and how to stop the continual atrocities humans wield upon each other.

The Daily Write: What I know about Wolves (August 30, 2013)

I told my daughter that I didn't know what to write about tonight as she sat at the table eating a slice of red velvet cake she cut herself. She said I should write about the fish she's getting this weekend and how excited she is about that. I would like to say that I, too, am excited. But we have two kids, two dogs, a bird and now fish? I really don't think I can bear one more creature to whom I am beholden.

  
My partner tells me that my daughter will take care of them. Have you ever seen a seven-year-old effectively clean a fish tank? Me neither. I say I will have nothing to do with the fish. I have to lay down the law, be firm, set expectations.

The thing is, I like fish. I've kind of always wanted fish. I find them beautiful and relaxing. I am a water Leo, liking the sun ever so much more when there is water nearby, feeling truly content in the dark of a winter rainstorm. So fish make sense to me.
  

But time passes quickly. One moment they will be new, in a pristine environment. The next it will be filled with murky water and algae and where will she be then, the parent who said yes to the fish?

A friend's family had fish they brought home after the end of the third grade "creeks and rivers" unit. Those fish lasted for two years and had lots of new little fish. Then his family went on vacation and the aquarium bulb got too hot. They came home to fish stew. I wonder who cleaned out the tank.

  
One problem, among others, with this scenario is that being right won't get me anywhere. Being right means I will end up cleaning the fish tank because no one else will get around to it soon enough. Do not envy me tonight.

The Daily Write: A spoonful of butter light (August 29, 2013)

Writing Prompt: A spoonful of butter light

When I came from school, or the park, or the pool hall, or Dunkin' Donuts after an all night cup of coffee and pack of cigarettes, I was famished. But our house was not one full of food. Not like my best friend in California whose mother stocked their kitchen with homemade cookies in a ceramic jar in the shape of a Siberian Husky, and who kept fresh layer cake under the skirts of a porcelain skinned doll with dark Victorian curls.

Our house was sparsely appointed with things that didn't make for very good snacks: miso paste, top ramen (yes, you can eat the noodles dry), a perpetually half-unthawed can of frozen orange juice. There was also always a giant jug of Grade A maple syrup from  New Hampshire, where my grandfather taught at a college during the school year before driving out to Oregon each summer loaded up with tree sap for the grandchildren.

Sometimes I would find the order form from the milkman and steal it away to fill out and leave for the next week's delivery without showing my mom. I marked the boxes for bags of popsicles, extra cartons of chocolate milk and ice cream. My mom didn't like it when I did that; it was expensive and I ordered food that made me fat

Other times, I would scrounge around the little kitchen with dark plywood cabinets and worn faux gold knobs looking for something delicious. I did this much in the way I searched under the beds and through the drawers of people for whom I babysat hoping to find porn.

Although we didn't have snacks, we almost always had butter and cheese. With these two staples I could make a complete meal of savory and sweet. First I grated the Tillamook cheddar into shreds, trying to keep my knuckles from turning bloody on the rusted metal teeth of the grater. Then I would heat up our prized non-stick skillet and spread the cheese around until it covered the entire bottom, like an orange moon. With the electric burner bright underneath the pan, I watched until the cheese melted, bubbled and then turned to a molten pancake of oily crisp dairy. 

For dessert I would mash up cold butter in a bowl with fork until it became soft, then mix in brown sugar pulled from the back of the cupboard above and to the left of the stainless steel sink. Plus a little vanilla. It never tasted as good as raw cookie dough, but in a pinch, which was most days, it would do.

The Daily Write: I need three things (August 28, 2013)

Writing Prompt: I need three things

If I were to redo my own junior high experience, I would resist authority less. I'm not sure why I bucked up so hard against the teachers and administrators. It was the rules, all those rules. The rules themselves, before I even started acting out, made me feel like a bad kid, like it was inevitable that I do something wrong. I think the rules propelled me to a life of delinquency and misery. They taught me things. They opened up a world of possibilities to me that I had not known were options.

In elementary school I behaved. I knew that was what expected of me and there was no getting out of it. I understood and did not question the consequences. I toed the line. But in junior high, there were so many lists of the potential bad I could enact that, like an afflicted child with OCD, I felt compelled to do them. It was some sort of reverse conjuring magic that resulted in my inability to make it through one entire day without mouthing off, taking off, lighting up or getting into a fight.

My son started middle school today, 6th grade. He's 11 going on 12. He and I both had to read through a long list of rules and sign them saying we understood. Here are some of the bad choices that read almost like suggestions:

• Assault or attempted assault
• Inciting others to fight
• Possessing, selling or furnishing firearms, knives, explosives, or other dangerous objects
• Possessing, using, selling or furnishing controlled substances and intoxicants
• Committing or attempting to commit robbery or extortion
• Causing or attempting to cause damage to school or private property
• Possessing or using tobacco or nicotine containing products
• Committing an obscene act or engaging in habitual profanity or vulgarity (including "pantsing" and "mooning") 
• Selling drug paraphernalia
• Disrupting school activities or otherwise willfully defying the valid authority of school personnel
• Knowingly receiving stolen school property or private property
• Possessing an imitation firearm
• Committing or attempting to commit a sexual assault or battery
• Harassing, threatening or intimidating a student who is a complaining witness or witness in a school disciplinary proceeding

For the love of god, what happened to not putting bad ideas into peoples' heads? No wonder I was a ticking time bomb in junior high; the chances of me not fucking up were minuscule. I'm just glad it didn't mention murder.

I'm going to the next PTA meeting with a new list of rules. If my kid is going to be treated like bad news waiting to happen, lets at least make him a revolutionary:

The following activities can lead to disciplinary action up to and including expulsion:

• Inciting riots
• Staging sit ins
• Standing up for the teachers union and organize mass walk outs
• Rebelling against standardized testing
• Defending for the underdog
• Resisting the abuse of power
• Defacing falsified US and world history textbooks
• Organizing alternative anti-war pep rallies
• Producing false ID for the purposes of becoming tattooed

The Daily Write: On the bedroom floor (August 25, 2013)

Writing Prompt: On the bedroom floor

I had a mission. I was made for that job. Everything up until that moment pointed me in that direction; the years of being an outcast; going to an alternative college where people like me learned to be more like ourselves and less like everyone else; the dinners with monks on long peace walks when I was a teenager; my co-coordination of the Lesbian/Gay Resource Center at school; my mom living on a commune. If not me, then whom exactly?
 

I had never applied for a "real" job before. I'd done stints as a nanny for two different families, uniquely awful in their own ways. I had delivered pizza for Domino's, unaware of their right wing politics and unable to turn down the money even if I had known. I worked for Burger King for a month or two, and a Danish Bakery, both while I was on a strict liquid protein fast (there are multiple ways to damage yourself, not just the obvious ones like cutting or drugs).
 

I babysat. I counted screws and nails during a hardware store's biannual inventory. I cleaned houses. But I never worked in anything where you had to fill out a long application with essay answers to hard questions. I'll admit, it freaked me out. I wanted to work there so badly, I was perfect for the position as a youth organizer for LGBT Quakers, but what could I say about my commitment to non-violence that didn't relate back to what I characterized as my pacifist upbringing? Having an aunt and a mother with gurus for spiritual leaders and being anti-war suddenly didn't seem like quite enough.
 

I was intimidated by the application and didn't have a typewriter to make my responses look neat. Instead I borrowed my roommate's typing machine with a one-line text display in an LCD window like something you'd see on a calculator. It was compact, complex and easy to lose one's work. I struggled to write coherent answers to questions that were far too specific for a general background like mine while learning how to bold, underline, backspace and save work, only successful some of the time.

Everything I wrote felt wrong and I struggled for two days and nights trying to make it a good application while crying, getting so frustrated I begged my roommate to be a reader and editor. Finally, an hour after the deadline passed, I drove up from the country outside Olympia to Seattle, searched for the center in the dark past midnight, and slipped my clumsy application under the door in a too-thick envelope.

I didn't even get a call. I may have been naive, but they were too closed minded. Or so I consoled myself as I waited in line at the food bank, no job in sight.

The Daily Write: It cannot be undone (August 24, 2013)

Writing Prompt: It cannot be undone
  

When I turned 10 we rented a funky old roller skating rink with bumpy, uneven floors that made you careen rather than sail across the distance between one side of the curved wall and another. There was a popcorn machine and drinks and all us hippie kids skating around, laughing. In the photo you see me standing in my "Foxy" tank top next to Melissa with her long hair and bright cheeks. She came from Takilma, an exotic sounding place somewhere in Southern Oregon. She lived rogue, like the river, with her siblings and parents and dogs. They were country people, down a dirt road so long it felt like going to another planet getting to them, hidden, in a meadow, near the woods.
 

Melissa's mom served drinks in jars and made grains she pulled from reused plastic bags. They had one car, an old Volvo station wagon, and a pick up truck that had seen better days. At the end of summer, visiting Melissa and her family felt like the best adventure ever. I was jealous of her life. She didn't have to pretend to be like other kids. She didn't have to have a big house or wall-to-wall carpeting to fit in. She was free. Or so it seemed to me. But I was only just 10 and what did I know about freedom?

She told me in the winter they had to walk that 7 mile dirt road, covered in snow, to get to and from school. I couldn't fathom it. She told me she loved me and that we'd be friends forever. I wanted her to be right. But she lived so far down that road, and I lived so far away from her world of rough-hewn wood, scrap metal and tire swings that it didn't seem possible. I loved her like a sister even though we only spent one summer together. I loved her so much that when I came home with lice, I didn't care. At least I had gotten a taste of her adventure. At least there was that.